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Monday, October 20, 2014

Making a Tug Even Better

At Eve Vegas CCP Fozzie revealed some new ship related news. The Blackbird model is being revamped. After the Moa and the Crow I think we can expect a less boxy, symmetrical model... unfortunatly. Will be sad if this is true to see the fairly unique ships of Eve turned into more generic sci-fi ships. There is no atmosphere in space, they don't need to be aerodynamic.

We also have T3 destroyers. Woot! These will be different to T3 Cruisers in there will be no sub-systems. Instead you'll have three modes you can swap between. Defensive, Agile and Sniper. Thinking about a T3 Cockbag that can be in sniper mode, try and run in Agile mode if you don't volley them and then can sit in defensive mode if they catch you hoping the cavalry turn up could be very interesting! These ships will be released one per expansion starting with Amarr and finishing with Gallente given the results in the recent "technology race".

We are also getting a new ship, currently in development, code-name "The Tug". This freighter sized ship will have a ship maintenance array to place fitted ships in. In fact Fozzie said it could fit "several" fitted battleships. However, like freighters it appears they are designed for high-sec. It was said they are basically "carriers" for hi-sec.

Carriers have several uses. The most common being:-

1. Repairing stuff (Triage).2. Ratting.3. Moving stuff (Suitcase).

They are currently very good at all three, however will be pretty poor at #3 after Phoebe and the jump drive/fatigue changes. Whilst force projection needs to be nerfed, the Phoebe changes also make it a massive PITA to move. Lets look at Drackarn. Say he gets bored of low-sec.... OK say he gets even more bored than he is now... and wants to move. How easy is that going to be? If I joined up with some Null-sec guys and wanted to take my stuff to my new home....

Yeah, I'm staying in Nisuwa. Can you imagine me rebasing with all THAT after Phoebe and the long-distance travel changes? Smeg off!

What if we added a jump drive to the tug and gave it a bonus to fatigue like the jump freighter has? There needs to be care taken but imho the issue with current force projection is capital and super-capital. Keeping the ability to move battleships and down quickly shouldn't be an issue should it? Yeah, Eve players, right. Might not be a good idea.

So if a jump drive tug is not the answer to "How do we help people move without opening force project" what is? How can the individual player, corporations and smaller alliances move home?

On idea that popped into my head was Interbus contracts. They took a week to process but you could get stuff moved by NPC's. Yes, obviously my next thought was that goes against the sandbox and impacts on other things such as Black Frog etc.

Basically either you strip your ships, lose the rigs and jump freighter the ships to your new home and then re-fit, or you accept its going to take a dogs age to get there.

All I can hope is some start using the 'tugs' with escorts to move large quantities of ships across low-sec. Convoy raids could be a lot of fun!

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